Word: conscripts
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Soviets the consequences could be disastrous. First of all, there would be the strong possibility of armed resistance from the Polish population and even from units of the conscript-based armed forces. "The Poles will not stand aside as the Czechs did in 1968," predicts a Bonn Kremlinologist. Though open resistance would eventually be subdued by Moscow's overwhelming might, the myth of Warsaw Pact unity would be forever destroyed, and underground rebellion might smolder on for years. Even short of that, the Soviets would have to assume responsibility for Poland's $27 billion foreign debt...
Polish police and security forces are considered more responsive to party control than the conscript-laden army. If these internal forces could not control workers' strikes and uprisings, the Soviets could be "invited" into Poland by the Warsaw government. The Soviets could strike with upwards of 40 divisions, each consisting of 7,000 to 13,000 troops, according to an expert at the International...
Cunningham, who said that the capital interests of certain industrialists already dicates the direction of scientific research at universities, added that the Reagan administration "would most likely conscript scientists into the ranks of an elite military research group to develop strains of recombinant DNA for defense...
Nature and human enterprise have endowed the Soviet Union with wealth and power. The prodigious achievements of the U.S.S.R. in mining, agriculture and energy production still conjure up images of the infamous Siberian mines, collective farms and hydroelectric projects of the 1930s, where armies of political prisoners, conscript peasants and idealistic volunteers "built Communism" under the cruel supervision of Joseph Stalin's armed guards and commissars. Today's reality is less harsh, but the profile of the country still bulges with muscle; the recitation of its endowments and achievements is still redolent of brute force, monumentality and projects that dwarf...
Between 6 a.m. reveille and 10 p.m. lights out, the conscript normally has about two hours of free time. One familiar escape from boredom and routine is alcohol. Buying liquor, however, is difficult. Draftees earn a mere four rubles a month (about $6), enough for 13 bottles of beer or a third of a liter of vodka or a dozen packs of cigarettes. Because draftees are short of cash, the Soviet military has a theft problem. Auto parts, grease, rope, felt boots, heavy overcoats and other items in short supply for civilians are smuggled off base to nearby villages...